The Kellogg Institute for International Studies, part of the University of Notre Dame’s new Keough School of Global Affairs, is an interdisciplinary community of scholars that promotes research, provides educational opportunities, and builds linkages related to democracy and human development.

Work in Progress Session - The Infrastructure of Authoritarianism: State-Society Relationships, Public Sector Organizations, and Regime Resilience in Putin's Russia

Using the case of Putin’s Russia, my paper distinguishes two patterns of state-society relationships and demonstrate how they interact with state structures to produce different effects for authoritarian politics. When people perceive the state as the embodiment of their public will, they cooperate with state officials at the community level and allow creation of an efficient administrative machine only marginally dependent on material redistribution. When people perceive the state as a predator, they turn every request for cooperation into a bargain for material resources, making the regime dependent on redistribution and vulnerable to economic crises.

This profile was current as of 2018, when she was part of the on-campus Kellogg community.Natalia Forrat (PhD, Northwestern University), a 2017–18 Kellogg Visiting Fellow, is a sociologist who studies how contemporary authoritarian regimes build relationships with their societies in ways that help autocrats survive...Read More